2011 Holiday Buying Guide

People often buy expensive electronic gadgets as gifts, but many of these gadgets are bad for your freedom.

Here's our guide to the best and worst gifts:

Video games — With all of the big game console manufacturers
supporting and using more Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) in
their products, there aren't good options here. But in particular,
avoid Sony, since they have been aggressively prosecuting
users, and Nintendo, since they claim the right to
remotely "brick" some devices.

Video streaming sites and devices — Amazon prime, Netflix Streaming, Hulu Plus, Apple TV and Google TV all, sadly, require Microsoft Silverlight** or Adobe DRM, and so should be avoided. The same is true for devices such as the Roku player and Logitech Revue (for Google TV). Alternatively, consider purchasing a small computer and installing MythTV on top of a free software GNU/Linux distribution; this can easily become your all-in-one DVR and home media center. And while you may not be able to stream many blockbuster movies, we hope that, over time more filmmakers will refuse to allow their movies to be encumbered by DRM, as Nina Paley has chosen to do with her film, Sita Sings the Blues and comedian Louis CK has done with his latest show.

Blu-Ray — Avoid Blu-Ray discs. They cannot be used with free
software, and buying them is supporting Old Media's latest system
for controlling every step of what users can do with media they
buy.

Music players — For music this season, don't look to Apple for
anything; all their portable music players support DRM and many
devices refuse to work on GNU/Linux without serious tinkering or
jailbreaking.

Cars — If you're thinking of buying a new car, be sure to avoid
cars with the MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch software. Glitches
in this proprietary software have led Ford to issue an update. This
means the car can be infected with malicious software and is best
avoided. Lastly, beware of GM cars with cell phones built-in, because cells phones are so easily used as tracking devices.

Smartphones — Replicant, the project
to produce a fully free distribution of Android recently added more
phones to its list of supported models. The list of supported phones are as follows:

Htc Dream / G1 / ADP1

Google Nexus One

HTC Magic / G2 /ADP2

Here at the FSF, we scored a
bounty of HTC Dream phones, and many of us use them as our day-to-day
cell phones. These phones are still problematic, because they include
a proprietary firmware that could monitor all activity on the phone,
but the ability to have a fully free application environment is a
great step forward.

Ebook readers — All the ebook readers sold through Amazon and
Barnes & Noble use DRM and proprietary software. Even if a user
manages to only use these devices to read DRM-free materials,
purchase of the device includes licenses for DRM and proprietary
software.

Laptops and Desktops — There are a couple of companies who will
sell you a computer with a fully-free GNU/Linux distribution
preinstalled. Some of these companies even donate a small amount of
money to the FSF. One such company is
Los Alamos Computers and another is ThinkPenguin